Lucian's Pov
It took three days to uncover the location of the Gallows' Oath, and each hour wasted had been a needle in my spine. Time was something I didn't have, and yet it slipped through my fingers like cursed sand.
Lya had been the one to find it—of course she had. Of my three aides, information was her strength, and she wielded it like a blade. The Gallows' Oath, she'd said, was a place buried in witch history—some secret, long-forgotten ritual ground in the mountains where members of their coven once offered themselves up as vessels. Willingly. They'd let their source of power—whatever ancient thing that was—speak through them to the rest of their coven in human form, often at the cost of their minds or their lives. Madness cloaked in reverence.
That practice had supposedly died out centuries ago. But here we were, racing toward a sacrificial cave on the eve of a blood moon.
